Please, someone answer. I can’t face the dark by myself.

I never really understood why my Father didn’t want me so I blamed everyone in my life. I blamed the people who loved me because my father didn’t.

SHE SEES A LIGHT BY DANIEL BRUGIONI 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 89

“Where were we that time we flushed that doe for Smitty’s cousin and he shot it in the leg? Was that down here or up at Dexter’s?”

“Down here,” Ronnie said.

The late afternoon was warm, nearly hot, and still, and the light had a milky quality to it, as though the day were not darkening but rather pulling inward on itself. A small mist had begun.

“What a fuck-up that was! Remember? Took us most of the day to find it. Warn’t even no meat on the fuckin’ thing neither.” Gary laughed humorlessly and shook his head and drank his beer. There was a pause, a long one. “Remember?” Gary said, more pointedly this time.

“I do,” Ronnie said.

“That’s what you get for takin’ someone out with you who don’t know what the fuck they’re doin’.”

“Yep.”

Ronnie raised his bottle to his lips but did not d…